The Internet has gained broad recognition and acceptance as a viable medium for communicating and for conducting business. The World-Wide Web (Web) is comprised of server-hosting computers (Web servers) connected to the Internet that have hypertext documents (referred to as Web pages) stored therewithin. Web pages are accessible by client program (e.g., Web browsers) utilizing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) via a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) connection between a client-hosting device and a server-hosting device. While HTTP and Web pages are the prevalent forms for the Web, the Web itself refers to a wide range of protocols and Web content formats.
With the increasing mobility of today's society, the demand for mobile computing capabilities has also increased. Many workers and professionals are downsizing their laptop computers to smaller hand-held devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs). In addition, many people now utilize wireless devices, such as cellular telephones, to access the Internet and to perform various other computing functions. Wireless devices may include, but are not limited to, PDAs, cellular telephones, pagers, and communicators. Many wireless devices also utilize the Microsoft® Windows® CE and 3Com Palm® Computing platforms. With the advent and development of wireless telecommunications systems and technologies, wireless Internet access is increasing worldwide.
As the Web has evolved into a viable commercial medium, advertising has become an important source of revenue for many entities. Web pages served from Web sites may utilize advertising to promote various goods and services. For many conventional wireless devices, Web content is displayed as a sequence of displays (cards). To subsidize costs, wireless content publishers may use advertisements mixed with content, often as interstitial displays within a sequence of content displays.
Conventionally, advertisements are served from an advertisement server, as illustrated in prior art FIG. 1. A browser executing within a client device 10 requests an advertisement from an advertisement server 20, represented by A. The advertisement server 20 returns the advertisement to the client device for insertion within a displayed Web page, represented by B. When a user clicks on the displayed advertisement, a request is sent to the advertisement server 20, represented by C. In response, the advertisement server 20 returns a redirection directive associated with a third party advertiser to the browser, represented by D. The browser follows the redirection to a Web site of the advertiser 25, represented by E, wherein additional details and/or information can be obtained, represented by F.
One of the primary functions of an advertisement server is to store (and allow retrieval of) information on the effectiveness of a given advertising campaign (referred to as “accounting”). The effectiveness of advertising via the Internet is conventionally measured by monitoring the “click-through” rate associated with advertising. A “click-through” event occurs when a user interacts with an advertisement displayed within a Web page by “clicking” on the advertisement (e.g., via a mouse or other input device) Conventionally, an advertisement server is notified when an advertisement is served, and when a user clicks on the advertisement. These advertisement servers typically maintain statistics on how many times advertisements have been served, how many times they have been “clicked-on”, etc., even if advertisements are served from multiple sites in multiple domains.
“Voice portals”, which allow access to the Internet via telephone, are becoming increasingly popular. Utilizing speaker-independent speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies, voice portals can be accessed via wireless and wireline telephones and can allow users to “verbally” surf the web and make transactions (e.g., purchase airline tickets). Voice Extensible Markup Language (VXML) allows a user to interact with the Internet through voice-recognition technology. Instead of a traditional browser that relies on a combination of HTML and keyboard and/or mouse, VXML relies on a voice browser and/or the telephone. Using VXML, a user interacts with a voice browser by listening to audio output that is either pre-recorded or computer-synthesized and then submitting audio input either by voice or by keypad.
As with the visually browsed Internet, voice portals are expected to generate revenue by selling advertising “space” on their sites. Advertising space for a voice portal relates to audio advertisements interspersed with content. Thus, when “listening to the Web”, a user might hear advertisements similar to those conventionally heard via radio.
Unfortunately, delivery, management, and accounting for audio advertisements may be difficult via conventional advertisement server systems. In addition, audio advertisements may not be capable of interacting with conventional Internet advertising. As such, a need exists for integrating audio advertisements with conventional advertisement server systems and for allowing interaction with audio advertisements.